The present invention relates to the housing structure of an ink ribbon cassette used for a recording apparatus such as a thermal printer, and a method of replacing an ink ribbon film.
In order to allow a user to replace an ink ribbon film used for a thermal transfer line printer or the like, good operability is required. For this reason, in a conventional ink ribbon film replacing method, an ink ribbon film is generally replaced as an expendable supply together with its ink ribbon cassette housing.
Disposing an ink ribbon film as an expendable supply together with its ink ribbon cassette in this manner leads to an increase in the expenses of expendable supplies on the user side, besides it is not desirable from the viewpoint of saving of resources and prevention of environmental pollution. Therefore, it is strongly required that large resin components such as ink ribbon cassette housings be reused.
In order to meet such a requirement, there is proposed a method of directly mounting a bobbin having an ink ribbon film wound therearound in a printer apparatus or the like. According to this method, however, a cumbersome operation is required, and hence a problem is posed in terms of the above-mentioned operability.